Wednesday, March 04, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2015


Thursday, March 5, 5pm
Rally in Solidarity with Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution
Join us us to say "U.S Hands off Venezuela!"
24th and Mission, San Francisco

 Sponsored by Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition. Endorsed by ANSWER Coalition, SOA Watch-San Francisco; FMLN-Nor. California; FSLN-Nor. California; Haiti Action Committee; Hondurenos en Resistencia del Norte de California; Task Force on the Americas; Nicaragua Center for Community Action; Party for Socialism and Liberation; Workers World Party; Marcha Patriotica of Nor. Cal.

This demonstration is part of nationally-coordinated actions against U.S. aggression in Venezuela

More info: 415-821-6545 or www.ANSWERsf.org
ANSWER SF


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SF Antiwar Protest on 12th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Saturday, March 21, 12 noon, Powell and Market Sts.

In solidarity with the “Spring Rising” protest at the White House on Mar. 21

Stop Pres. Obama’s proposed new 3-year AUMF – Authorization for Use of Military Force!

End U.S. War and Occupation in the Middle East and Central Asia – U.S. Out!

No to U.S. sanctions and intervention vs. Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Haiti and everywhere

Free Palestine – End U.S. Aid to Israel!

Fund People’s Needs, Not Endless War!

To Endorse or Volunteer reply to: answer@answersf.org
More info: 415-821-6545 or visit www.ANSWERsf.org.
ANSWER SF

To join the Facebook event for Spring Rising: https://www.facebook.com/events/430232700485435
For more information, click here:
http://nepajac.org/springrising.html

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cancel-the-detroitwater-debt-and-start-afresh


We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the existing debts of Detroit Water and Sewerage customers and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Last year, Detroit made international headlines when tens of thousands of residents lost their access to water through an aggressive shut-off program by the water department.

The city of Detroit has endured decades of economic turmoil, drastic depopulation and repeated mismanagement. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is over $5 billion in debt (over $4,500 per family in the metro Detroit area).To compensate, they have increased rates over 119% in the last decade.¹Residents who fall behind on their bills risk water shutoff, and in 2014 that’s exactly what happened to tens of thousands of Detroiters.

The shutoff program didn't work, and the DWSD collected less than 3% of the over $100 million currently owed.² A large number of the families who entered into payment plans last year are now defaulting on them yet again because they lack sufficient income.

In contrast, a voluntary bond tender offer initiated during the shutoffs allowed the city to renegotiate high interest rates on municipal water bonds and save over $250 million in interest fees for the city.³

The bond markets know that Detroit's water debt is junk and the city will unlikely ever be able to pay the current interest rates, which is why Default Trends proclaimed Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) its "Biggest Default of 2014".⁴

Corruption in the DWSD has been rampant, with former Department head Victor Mercado currently serving an 8-month federal corruption sentence for "conspiracy to commit extortion" by padding department contracts and rigging bids that netted his business associates millions. Although many of those contracts are now being scrutinized by the city's legal team, Detroiters are still paying dearly for the fraud of past leaders.

The overbearing Detroit water debt has a human side, too: it has pushed Detroit into an outright humanitarian crisis. Rates of infectious disease and sickness are up dramatically, leading the National Nurses union recently to declare a 'Public Health Emergency' in Detroit.⁵The water department is significantly under-staffed and water infrastructure is crumbling, leading to leaks that cost taxpayers tens of millions annually. The department is unable to address these time-sensitive issues due to lack of funding, as it currently spends 46% of its operating revenue on debt service to banks - the largest line-item by far in its budget.

We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's existing debts and start afresh with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Detroit's existing water/sewerage rate structure is highly-regressive and unaffordable for too many families. We call on the city to implement the 2005 Water Affordability Plan to ensure that no family pays more than the EPA-recommended threshold for water, including "lifeline rates" for essential quantities of drinking/bathing water.⁶

The water department acknowledges that 90% of its operating costs are fixed⁷, meaning they don't depend upon how much water is consumed by users. Still, they charge usage-based rates that fluctuate dramatically with weather (up to 18% decrease in usage) and with broader demographic shifts in the region (2/3 of Detroit's population has left the city since 1950). Creating a progressive rate structure based at least partially upon a family's income - as is done with many public services like streetlights, schools, libraries, etc - would more equitably distribute the burden of operating a system relied upon by over 4 million people for essential drinking water.

The Detroit Water Brigade has provided emergency relief and advocacy to hundreds of families since June of 2014, including providing immediate financial assistance to families currently without water.⁸We've seen first-hand the disastrous effects of these harsh, debt-driven austerity policies.

We pledge to escalate this campaign in the coming months until we bring relief to the tens of thousands of metro Detroit families living without water today and the millions living precariously with unaffordable water rates.


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Free Albert Woodfox!
End the Injustice. Don’t Oppose Bail for Albert Woodfox

In 1972 a young white prison guard named Brent Miller was fatally stabbed inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola.” Although no physical evidence tied Albert Woodfox to the crime, he was immediately assumed to be guilty and placed in solitary confinement; 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps across. He was eventually convicted of the crime after trials tainted with constitutional violations and other legal issues, and has been held in solitary confinement, fighting to prove his innocence ever since.

Albert believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism and outspoken critique of injustice. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party and campaigned for better treatment, racial solidarity, and an end to the brutal sexual slavery in prison. Woodfox, Wallace and King came to be known as the Angola 3.

Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson. In late 2014, an appeals court upheld the decision in Alberts favor, and on February 6, his lawyers filed for bail. After years of the State of Louisiana appealing decisions in Albert’s favor, It is critical that Governor Bobby Jindal show leadership, and ensure that Albert’s cruel and unjust isolation is not his legacy. April 2015 will mark 43 years since Woodfox was first placed solitary - for a crime he maintains that he didn't' commit, a claim that much of the available evidence supports. It is time for the State to let the wisdom of the courts stand and ensure his release.


Amnesty International
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1502EAIAR2&ea.url.id=359128&forwarded=true

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL



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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS



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Protest War Criminal Netanyahu’s Speech to Joint Session of Congress

Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 pm, Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St., San Francisco

Join us on March 3 to say: No to War Criminal Netanyahu - No New War on Iran - End the Colonial Occupation of Palestine - End U.S. Aid to Israel!

More info: 415-821-6545 or www.ANSWERsf.org


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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

Join us March 4-6, 2015 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada, for a national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, and everywhere. Sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Nevada Desert Experience , Veterans For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. CODEPINK will also hold vigils daily on March 2nd and 3rd, prior to the official beginning of this Creech Convergence For Peace, and welcomes everyone to join them.


In 2005, Creech Air Force Base secretly became the first U.S. base in the country to carry out illegal, remotely controlled assassinations using the MQ-1 Predator drones, and in 2006, the more advanced Reaper drones were added to its arsenal.  Creech drone personnel sit behind computers in the desert north of Las Vegas and kill "suspects" thousands of miles away.  Recent independent research indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of those killed by drones are civilians. In 2014, it was leaked that the CIA's criminal drone assassination program, officially a separate operation from the Air Force's, has been piloted all along by Creech's super-secret Squadron 17. 


Since 2009 dozens of activists have been arrested for allegedly trespassing at Creech, in attempts to stop the indiscriminate killing and burning of innocent people by drones.  At the trial of the "Creech 14," the first Americans prosecuted for trespass at a drone base, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified that "to have a baby burn to death because of a 'no trespass'  sign would be poor public policy, to put it mildly."  In a time of burning children, the "no trespass" signs attached to the fences that protect the crimes perpetrated with drones are not legitimate, and they do not command our obedience.  After all, it is the U.S. military that is guilty of lethal trespassing.


The US drone program is rapidly proliferating as air bases are being converted to drone bases across the U.S. and abroad, but Creech remains the primary air base in U.S. state-sponsored global terrorism. Creech is where the killer drone program started--it is where we shall end it.


We must put an end to this desecration of our Mother Earth and all creatures who inhabit it.

We must put an end to the dehumanization of lives from Ferguson to Palestine to Pakistan.

We must close all foreign U.S. military bases.  Money for human needs. 

We must put an end to drone warfare, drone surveillance, and global militarization.

We must...
SHUT CREECH DOWN! 
More details to come soon!

Sign up on facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=3742154553#

Or contact:

Toby Blomé of Code Pink, 510-215-5974 (h)

Brian Terrell of VCNV and NDE,   773-853-1886

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Justice for Rasmea: All out for March 12!

On March 12, Rasmea is set to appear once again in the Detroit courtroom of Judge Gershwin Drain, this time for a sentencing hearing. We are seeking letters to the judge requesting leniency.

For this round of letters, we are NOT looking for a mountain of individual statements, but rather letters from prominent individuals who represent broader constituencies. We need you to work with leaders of faith-based, labor, and community organizations, as well as student governments, student organizations (national), prominent professors, and legislators in your area to draft and submit letters.

Below you will find an outline you can use to draft these letters, but it is important for the authors to write them in their own voices. Letters should be submitted by February 4 to justice4rasmea@uspcn.org.

Stay tuned! Keep sharing Rasmea’s story and organizing fundraisers. Watch for calls for your support as we prepare for sentencing and appeal. Our organizing is key to winning #Justice4Rasmea.

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright © 2015 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414

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Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015


UNAC is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today.  The existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms – from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back.  We’ve been inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of our time.  While most activists are focused on their particular issues, the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their source.  All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically.  When there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
·       Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·        Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America,    Ukraine, and maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
·        Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
·        Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·        Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on our civil liberties.
·        Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·        Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal, Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by the FBI.
·        Produced national educational conference calls featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·        Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the country.
·        Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·        Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in motion to cross-fertilize these struggles.  We are particularly dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from each other.  For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands, from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

 https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya “Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy, ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice, particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia (called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom, began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit” printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people."   
                     —Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

A financial contribution of any amount will be greatly appreciated.

Please send checks or money orders, made payable to Wadiya Jamal:

Wadiya Jamal
P.O. Box 19404
Kingsessing Postal Station
Philadelphia, PA 19143-9998

In loving memory of Samiya and in tribute to her fierce fight for life,

Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family


Hear Mumia’s Words (and Song) played before the Janazah for Samiya on December 20, 2014: “Samiya Abdullah Makes Transition”:

http://prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/audio/uploads/SamiyaAbdullahMakesTransition12-19-2.mp3?download=1

This message has been sent to you by:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222  •  Oakland CA  •  510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY 1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were “defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers, people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But, guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay, he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office. If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged! How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations. 


SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html

CONTRIBUTE TO LORENZO'S CAMPAIGN FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/how-can-i-help.html


Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC



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Click HERE to view in browser
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/
       
Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."  

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney 

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court 

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment. 

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action- write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

November 24, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
  • The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help
  • A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.”  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
  • Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).
  • A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!



Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
 Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org

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 B. ARTICLES IN FULL




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1) Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Men Out of Work
"Men with criminal records account for about 34 percent of all nonworking men ages 25 to 54, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll."
By




2) Exxon Settles $9 Billion Pollution Case in New Jersey for Far Less
By





3) Justice Department to Fault Ferguson Police, Seeing Racial Bias in Traffic Stops
By




4) Los Angeles Police Kill Man in Confrontation Caught on Video
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL





5) Ferguson Police Routinely Violate Rights of Blacks, Justice Dept. Finds
By




6) Columbia Graduate Students Push for a Labor Union
By




7) Oklahoma: House Approves Executions by Gas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS













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1) Out of Trouble, but Criminal Records Keep Men Out of Work
"Men with criminal records account for about 34 percent of all nonworking men ages 25 to 54, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll."
By

Michael Hugh Mirsky landed a temporary job in December rolling stacks of crated milk and orange juice to the loading docks at a commercial dairy in central New Jersey. He’s not making much, and he doesn’t know how long it will last, but after 30 months of unemployment, he counts himself lucky. Mr. Mirsky is a convicted criminal, and work is hard to find.

A series of unfortunate events that began in 2012 when Mr. Mirsky lost a job as a Verizon technician culminated last year in a guilty plea for resisting arrest. He is facing the foreclosure of his home; his church has told him that he cannot serve as an usher; he is thousands of dollars in arrears on child support payments for his 8-year-old daughter. Even as the economy improves, Mr. Mirsky has been unable to find a permanent position so he can start rebuilding his life.

“Even your lower-paying fast-food jobs are now doing background checks,” he said. “How can I pay child support if I can’t get a job?”

The share of American men with criminal records — particularly black men — grew rapidly in recent decades as the government pursued aggressive law enforcement strategies, especially against drug crimes. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, those men are having particular trouble finding work. Men with criminal records account for about 34 percent of all nonworking men ages 25 to 54, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

The reluctance of employers to hire people with criminal records, combined with laws that place broad categories of jobs off-limits, is not just a frustration for men like Mr. Mirsky; it is also taking a toll on the broader economy. It is preventing millions of American men from becoming, in that old phrase, productive members of society.

“Prior to the prison boom, when convictions were restricted to a smaller fraction of the population, it wasn’t great for their rehab potential but it wasn’t having a huge impact,” said Devah Pager, a Harvard professor of sociology. “Now such a large fraction of the population is affected that it has really significant implications, not just for those people, but for the labor market as a whole.”

Employers, of course, have always taken an interest in the histories of prospective employees. Banks do not want to hire embezzlers; trucking companies do not want drunken drivers. Schools and security companies don’t want to hire criminals of any kind. But the easy availability of online databases lets employers investigate everyone — indeed, it makes hard to justify not looking. Surveys show roughly nine in 10 United States employers check databases of criminal records when hiring for at least some positions. Some focus solely on felony convictions; others also consider misdemeanors or arrests.

Rising concern that background checks are being used to systematically exclude applicants with criminal records is fueling a national “ban the box” movement to improve their chances. The name refers to the box that job applicants are sometimes required to check if they have been convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor. Fourteen states and several dozen cities have passed laws, mostly in recent years, that generally require employers to postpone background checks until the later stages of the hiring process.

Georgia became the latest state to join that list when Gov. Nathan Deal signed an executive order Monday. It described the new policy as a matter of fairness and a way to strengthen the state’s economy by expanding the pool of workers. New Jersey passed its own “ban the box” law last year. It is scheduled take effect March 1. So help is on the way for Mr. Mirsky, too.

Living on Savings

Mr. Mirsky, 43, made a six-figure annual salary as a phone line technician in the decade before he lost his job in July 2012. He was fired after clashing repeatedly with a supervisor. The company declined to comment.

He spent a few months searching for a new job in his old industry, but there are not a lot of other companies in central New Jersey hiring people to repair copper phone lines. So in January 2013 he trained at a local community college as a heating and air-conditioning specialist. After graduating in December 2013, he was offered a chance to join the Pipefitters Union.

In the meantime, however, he was living on savings and gifts from friends. A woman from his church delivered occasional meals; a friend tucked $50 into a Thanksgiving card; another man hired him to unload a truck at his restaurant. He lived in a basement apartment in an old house in Port Murray, N.J., he bought in better days, beneath the ruins of his ambitious renovation plans. When I visited in January, the winter wind whistled through the broken windows and unfinished walls upstairs. Animal droppings speckled the floors. A stainless steel range and refrigerator sat in their original shrink-wrap. He had not paid his mortgage in three years and he was battling to prevent, or at least delay, foreclosure.

He also fell behind on child support payments, and under New Jersey law a warrant was automatically issued for his arrest. He says he knew nothing about it until police came to his home in June 2014. According to the police report, Mr. Mirksy struggled, and the officers knocked him down, handcuffed him and charged him with resisting arrest.

It was the first time that Mr. Mirsky had ever been arrested. A few months later, he pleaded guilty to a single felony. The immediate penalty was just $411 in court costs. The enduring problem is that he has a criminal record.

The Pipefitters Union had arranged a series of job interviews for him in May, June and August 2014. He also submitted about 30 applications to other employers last year, and received a couple of interviews, but no offers.

He is convinced nothing has panned out because of his legal troubles — the warrant, the arrest and the conviction.

“I’m 43 years old, not recently employed, and that doesn’t look great,” he said. “But mostly they don’t want the heartache.”

Of course, people rarely find out why they didn’t land a particular job. For the last several years, job applicants have vastly outnumbered job openings. Being fired from a previous job doesn’t help. And the issues that land people in legal trouble may also make them less attractive as applicants. But Ms. Pager, the Harvard sociologist, has found in her research that having a criminal record by itself is often a significant impediment.

In 2001, Ms. Pager sent pairs of black men and white men to apply for low-wage jobs at 350 businesses in the Milwaukee area. She picked sets of men who looked alike and were comparably well spoken and she gave them similar résumés — education, employment history — except that one member of each pair was told to claim that he had served 18 months in prison for a felony drug conviction.

She repeated the experiment in New York in 2004, sending pairs of “well-spoken, clean-shaven young men” to apply for 250 different jobs.

In both cases, she found men who reported criminal convictions were about 50 percent less likely to receive a callback or a job offer. The difference was significantly larger in the black pairs than in the white pairs. White employers seemed to show more sympathy for the white applicants, Ms. Pager said, and most of the employers were white.

Employers seemed to use the reported convictions as “a proxy for reliability and trustworthiness and a broader range of concerns beyond simply whether they would be aggressive,” she said. “Faced with a large number of applicants, this was one easy way of weeding out applicants.”

Unreliable Screenings

Lucia Bone worries that background checks are getting a bad rap. Ms. Bone is the founder of a nonprofit called Sue Weaver Cause that urges employers — particularly those that send workers into homes — to check the backgrounds of new hires and to conduct regular checks on existing employees. She says that many companies are not being careful enough.

The nonprofit is named for her sister, Sue Weaver, who was raped and murdered in 2001 after she hired a local department store in Orlando, Fla., to clean the air ducts in her home. The two men sent to perform the work both had criminal records, but the store had not ensured that its subcontractor conducted a background check. A few months later, one of those workers returned, killed Ms. Weaver, then set her house on fire.

“I very strongly believe that everyone has the right to work, but not every job is right for everyone,” Ms. Bone said. “It is the employer’s responsibility to protect both their business, their employees and their customers.”

The ready availability of criminal records databases has fueled the perception that it is irresponsible for employers to ignore available information. Local governments increasingly put criminal records online, and private companies like HireRight, Sterling BackCheck and LexisNexis Risk Solutions aggregate those records, offering almost instant results. In the early 1990s, less than half of companies routinely checked criminal histories. Now relatively few refrain.

“Criminal background screening is an important tool — nearly the only tool — that employers have to protect their customers, their employees and themselves from criminal behavior,” Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Association, testified before a congressional committee last year. Local, state and federal governments have embraced the same logic, writing background checks into professional licensing requirements and post-9/11 security regulations.

These policies affect a growing number of people. About 10 percent of nonincarcerated men had felony records in 2010, up from 4 percent in 1980, according to research led by the sociologists Sarah Shannon of the University of Georgia and Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota. The numbers are much higher among African-American men: About 25 percent of nonincarcerated black men had been convicted of a felony, up from 9 percent in 1980.

The problem with criminal background checks, in Mr. Uggen’s view, is a lack of deliberation about what employers should be looking for. Some employers ask about convictions for felonies; some ask only about narrow categories of felony like violent crimes or sex crimes. Others ask about any arrest whatsoever. “We haven’t really figured out what a disqualifying offense should be for particular activities,” he said.

Mr. Uggen was himself arrested few times as a Minnesota teenager for fighting and other minor sins but, when he submitted his college application to the University of Wisconsin, he was not asked and he did not tell. Now a professor, he said that some of his own students were not able to escape the past so easily.

Colleges routinely ask applicants about criminal history. So do landlords.

“For somebody of my generation who had a brush with the law, they were able to quickly put it in the rearview mirror and move on,” said Mr. Uggen, who is 50. “Now I have graduate students who maybe 10 years ago they were convicted of a crime and for them to try to get an apartment, it’s a huge barrier.”

The quality of the information used in background checks is another cause for concern. One of the most common problems is that databases may include arrest records without any indication of whether a person was convicted.

In 2008, for example, the government began to check the backgrounds of 1.2 million workers at the nation’s ports. A law passed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks mandated the exclusion of anyone with a conviction in the last seven years, and 59,000 workers were excluded as a result. But 30,000 of those workers filed appeals arguing their records were inaccurate, and in 25,000 of those cases, a more careful examination found no evidence of a conviction, according to a subsequent review by the Government Accountability Office. That’s worth repeating: When the background check system identified a felon, it was wrong at least 42 percent of the time.

And the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned in 2012 that the systematic exclusion of people with criminal records was effectively a form of discrimination against black men, who were disproportionately affected. It has filed lawsuits charging such discrimination by companies including BMW, Dollar General and Pepsi.

Jeffrey Menteer, who is 26 and lives in northwestern Pennsylvania, has applied for 15 jobs since June, when he completed a six-month prison term for a gun possession charge. A company that makes screen doors told him it might hire him after he gets off parole in October. Other than that he has found nothing. He said his criminal record was making it hard to find work.

“Between that and my race, black living in a white town, it’s tough,” he said.

He worked steadily as a logger for about five years before he was arrested. He made about $800 a week except in the spring, the off-season for the tree-cutting business. Now he lives with his parents, and the only money he makes is from occasional work shoveling snow.

“I don’t really blame them, but I wish they’d be a little more open-minded,” he said of local employers. “People do change.”

These concerns, and a wave of stories like Mr. Menteer’s, have catalyzed efforts to legislate protections.

The first “fair chance” law was passed by Hawaii in 1998. The law prohibits most private employers from inquiring about criminal history until after making a conditional job offer. Then the offer can be revoked only if the offense is relevant.

In just the last few years, the list of jurisdictions with similar laws has expanded rapidly, although the details vary: Some apply only to public sector jobs, others allow background checks at earlier stages in the hiring process, and they all include long lists of exemptions.

Still, the trend is clear enough that several of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Target, have also stopped asking about criminal records at the beginning of the job application process.

Breaking the Cycle

The current debate, however, is largely about mulligans: giving people a second chance after a fairly isolated mistake. It does not address the underlying cycles of crime and incarceration that plague many men in lower-income communities.

Gregory Payne, 52, worked for a company that made insurance manuals in Santa Monica, Calif., after graduating from high school. He said he lost the job when he needed to care for a daughter who was ill. “I had two kids and an apartment, and the only fast money I could see was” dealing drugs, he said. He was caught, went to prison, got out, said he couldn’t find work and returned to dealing. He served 16 months, then three years, then another three years and a final four years on top of that. “You keep doing the things that get you the money because you can’t get other jobs,” he said.

About seven years ago, he left his life in Venice, on the Pacific Coast, and moved with a newborn son to California City, about 100 miles inland. He said he hadn’t used or sold drugs since moving, but employers don’t seem any more interested. “Your record hurts you, man,” he said. “In certain cases, I understand. They got a right to say no if you’re stealing and robbing people. I wouldn’t hire you myself. But people who went up for drugs?”

Last year, California passed a “ban the box” law but, at least for Mr. Payne, it came too late. He qualified for federal disability benefits two years ago and said he had no immediate plans to seek work.

Mr. Mirsky is more hopeful that New Jersey’s new law will help him find work.

He says he hopes that he has hit bottom. In November a friend put him in touch with an agency that places workers in short-term jobs. He said that most of the other men also have criminal records. He worked five days at a brewery, a half-day at a coffee plant and a few weeks at the dairy. When that job ended, the company liked him enough to offer him a second temporary job. But on the January morning he was scheduled to start, just minutes before he planned to leave the house, the police arrested him again on a new charge of not paying child support.

This time he went quietly, and the judge let him go. And the dairy, after a few phone calls, said he could start the next day.

It felt, Mr. Mirsky said, like the first lucky break he’d had in more than four years.





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2) Exxon Settles $9 Billion Pollution Case in New Jersey for Far Less
By

A long-fought legal battle to recover $8.9 billion in damages from Exxon Mobil Corporation for the contamination and loss of use of more than 1,500 acres of wetlands, marshes, meadows and waters in northern New Jersey has been quietly settled by the state for around $250 million.

The lawsuits, filed by the State Department of Environmental Protection in 2004, had been litigated by the administrations of four New Jersey governors, finally advancing last year to trial. By then, Exxon’s liability was no longer in dispute; the only issue was how much it would pay in damages.

The stakes were high, given the enormous cost the state’s experts had placed on restoring and replacing the resources damaged by decades of oil refining and other petrochemical operations, as well as of the public’s loss of use of the land.

“The scope of the environmental damage resulting from the discharges is as obvious as it is staggering and unprecedented in New Jersey,” the administration of Gov. Chris Christie said in a court brief filed in November.

But a month ago, with a State Superior Court judge believed to be close to a decision on damages, the Christie administration twice petitioned the court to hold off on a ruling because settlement talks were underway. Then, last Friday, the state told the judge that the case had been resolved.

The parties have not announced the deal publicly, and it still must be approved by the judge. But some legal and environmental experts who were told about the agreement asked why New Jersey would suddenly settle a case that it had fought strenuously for more than a decade.

Richard B. Stewart, a New York University law professor and a former head of the Justice Department’s environmental division under President George Bush, noted the “striking disparity between the damages claimed, which have been exhaustively litigated, and the settlement amount,” particularly with a judicial ruling expected soon. Mr. Stewart said that it was hard to assess the agreement without knowing the evidence, but that “it raises questions.”

The documents that made reference to the settlement, which had not been filed publicly, were obtained after a request by The New York Times. They do not reveal the settlement amount; the figure was provided by two people who were told about it, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal was not yet public.

A review of state campaign finance databases shows no record of Exxon’s making any campaign contribution to Mr. Christie, either through its political action committee or directly, in those years available online.

Exxon did contribute $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association in May 2014, when Mr. Christie was serving a one-year term as its chairman; the company has contributed annually to the group since at least 2008, records show.

An Exxon spokesman said on Friday that the company’s annual contributions depended on the number of contests for governor that year, and that Mr. Christie’s position had no bearing on the 2014 amount.

If the settlement is completed, it is possible that some or even none of the money would go toward environmental costs in the Exxon case: An appropriations law in New Jersey allows money beyond the first $50 million collected in such cases in the current fiscal year to go toward balancing the state budget, a state fiscal analyst said.

A spokesman for Mr. Christie referred questions about the settlement to the attorney general’s office. A spokesman for the acting attorney general, John J. Hoffman, said on Thursday that the office had no comment, as was its practice with pending litigation. Exxon also declined to comment on the settlement.

Debbie Mans, the executive director of the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper, characterized the proposed deal as “a travesty” and called on the judge to “reject the settlement outright.”

The deal comes at a time when Mr. Christie, a potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, is experiencing the lowest approval ratings of his tenure, and has been forced to defend his decision to reduce state pension payments.

The state chapter of the Sierra Club this week criticized his budget proposal, saying it would hurt environmental protections. Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said on Thursday that the governor stood by his environmental record, and that the Sierra Club had been “reflexively partisan in its criticism of the governor.”

The damage to the Bayonne and Linden (known as Bayway) sites dated back many years. “Contamination of the land and water at the Bayway and Bayonne refineries began as early as the 1870s in Bayonne and the early 1900s in Bayway and continues to this day,” the state’s expert report says.

“Today, many of these dredge fill areas still look and smell like petroleum waste dumps,” the report continues. “Spilled materials from pipeline ruptures, tank failures or overflows, and explosions have resulted in widespread groundwater, soil and sediment contamination.”

The attorney general’s office said in its brief in November that the sites had been “adversely affected by or buried under the discharge of hazardous substances,” including over 600 identified chemicals.

On the Bayway site, a 2007 court opinion noted, marshland adjacent to a creek was “now mostly covered with a tar of petroleum products or filled with other hazardous constituents and debris.” Another 45 acres comprised “sludge lagoons,” onetime tidal marshes used as hazardous waste disposal facilities.The state had set the cost of primary restoration of the sites at $2.6 billion; the state also sought $6.3 billion for what it described as compensatory or “loss of use” damages, intended “to make the public whole.”

The damages trial, held before Judge Michael J. Hogan in Mount Holly, N.J., lasted from January through September 2014. The judge was to rule once the closing briefs were filed in November.

Exxon had vigorously contested the lawsuit, and in its brief after the trial said that it had long ago taken responsibility for cleaning up the contamination; that there were “fully functioning” marshes, forests and wildlife on the sites; and that, because they had been closed to the public for years, the state was seeking a windfall “for something the public never lost.”

Exxon argued that the state’s arguments “ignore the evidence, science and the law” and that no damages should be awarded.

It was unclear when the settlement talks began. A deputy state attorney general, Richard F. Engel, emailed Judge Hogan on Jan. 29, saying the parties were engaged in “serious settlement negotiations” and asking him to “defer the issuance of a decision in this matter.”

Two weeks later, Mr. Engel again wrote to the judge, saying “a few critical points” still needed to be resolved and asking that he delay his decision until Feb. 20.

By then, Mr. Engel added, “we are confident that we will have an agreement or our efforts to settle will have ended.”

Then last Friday, Mr. Engel wrote to Judge Hogan, saying the parties had reached a settlement “which is memorialized in a final, agreed upon, consent judgment.”

Mr. Engel said the agreement would be submitted for public comment in April and would then be submitted for court approval in May, “unless comments received during the public notice and comment period necessitate a change.”

If the settlement is approved, Judge Hogan will presumably not release his opinion, and _whatever damages he would have set will not be made public.


Alain Delaquérière contributed research.


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3) Justice Department to Fault Ferguson Police, Seeing Racial Bias in Traffic Stops
By


WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has nearly completed a highly critical report accusing the police in Ferguson, Mo., of making discriminatory traffic stops of African-Americans that created years of racial animosity leading up to an officer’s shooting of a black teenager last summer, law enforcement officials said.

According to several officials who have been briefed on the report’s conclusions, the report criticizes the city for disproportionately ticketing and arresting African-Americans and relying on the fines to balance the city’s budget. The report, which is expected to be released as early as this week, will force Ferguson officials to either negotiate a settlement with the Justice Department or face being sued by it on civil rights charges. Either way, the result is likely to be significant changes inside the Ferguson Police Department, which is at the center of a national debate over race and policing.Ferguson erupted into angry, sometimes violent protests after a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in August. The Justice Department investigated that shooting, and officials have said they will clear the officer of civil rights charges. That finding is also expected soon.

But the report into the broader practices of the local police department will give the context for the shooting, describing the mounting sense of frustration and anger in a predominantly black city where the police department and local government are mostly white.

While the Justice Department’s exact findings are not yet known, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who is expected to leave office in the next few weeks, and other officials have said publicly that their investigation has focused on the use of excessive force and the treatment of prisoners in local jails as well as the traffic stops.

Blacks accounted for 86 percent of traffic stops in 2013 but make up 63 percent of the population, according to the most recent data published by the Missouri attorney general. And once they were stopped, black drivers were twice as likely to be searched, even though searches of white drivers were more likely to turn up contraband.

For people in Ferguson who cannot afford to pay their tickets, routine traffic stops can become yearslong ordeals, with repeated imprisonments because of mounting fines. Such fines are the city’s second-largest source of revenue after sales tax. Federal investigators say that has provided a financial incentive to continue law enforcement policies that unfairly target African-Americans.

In an unrelated but similar case, the Justice Department recently filed court documents in a lawsuit over whether the city of Clanton, Ala., is running a debtors’ prison. The lawsuit says city officials there keep poor people in jail simply because of their inability to pay fines.

“Because such systems do not account for individual circumstances of the accused, they essentially mandate pretrial detention for anyone who is too poor to pay the predetermined fee,” wrote Vanita Gupta, the top civil rights prosecutor at the Justice Department, who is also supervising the Ferguson inquiry.

Investigators do not need to prove that Ferguson’s policies are racially motivated or that the police intentionally singled out minorities. They need to show only that police tactics had a “disparate impact” on African-Americans and that this was avoidable. Nevertheless, the Justice Department’s report is expected to include a reference to a racist joke that was circulated by email among city officials, according to several law enforcement officials.

James Knowles III, the mayor of Ferguson, said last week that he did not know what the Justice Department had found or would conclude. But he criticized Mr. Holder for saying recently that wholesale change was needed in Ferguson’s police department.

“How come they haven’t told us there is something that needs to be changed as they found it?” Mr. Knowles asked. “Why have they allowed whatever they think is happening to continue to happen for six months if that’s the case?”

Mr. Holder has stood by his remarks, saying they were based on his deep understanding of the case. “The reality is, I’ve been briefed all along on this matter,” he said at a news conference recently.

The Ferguson case will be the last in a long string of civil rights investigations into police departments that Mr. Holder has directed during his tenure. Since he became attorney general in 2009, the Justice Department has opened more than 20 such investigations and issued strong rebukes of departments in Cleveland and Albuquerque, accusing them of excessive force and unwarranted shootings.The Ferguson report, however, is expected to more closely resemble last summer’s report into police activities in Newark. There, as in Ferguson, the police stopped black people at a significantly higher rate than whites. “This disparity is stark and unremitting,” the Justice Department wrote in that report, which concluded that African-Americans “bear the brunt” of the city’s unconstitutional police practices.

In some cities investigated by the Justice Department, such as Albuquerque and Portland, Ore., city officials have said they are open to making changes and quickly reaching an agreement with the department to fix problems. Others have taken a more confrontational approach, did not settle and faced a federal civil rights lawsuit. The Justice Department has four such lawsuits open, including one against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., and another against Sheriff Terry S. Johnson of Alamance County, N.C.

Mr. Knowles said he would not speculate on how Ferguson would respond to the report. “The City of Ferguson is going to make its decisions based on what its residents and the people in this region feel is necessary to move us forward,” he said.

Mr. Knowles said the city hoped to increase diversity on its police force and was considering creating a board of citizens to help oversee it. He said the city was also considering creating a police youth program.

For Mr. Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, the Ferguson shooting was a signature moment. Already the most outspoken member of the Obama administration on issues of race relations, Mr. Holder became the president’s emissary to Ferguson and helped calm tensions amid protests after the shooting. He spoke in personal terms about being stopped by police as a college student and again as a prosecutor in Washington.

“I wanted the people of Ferguson to know that I personally understood that mistrust,” Mr. Holder said last summer after returning from Missouri. “I wanted them to know that while so much else may be uncertain, this attorney general and this Department of Justice stands with the people of Ferguson.”

Comments like these attracted criticism from some police groups who said Mr. Holder was taking sides and casting aspersions on police officers. Mr. Holder has pledged that the Ferguson investigation — by far the most closely watched during his tenure — would be fair and independent. “I’m confident people will be satisfied with the results,” he said.

John Eligon contributed reporting from Kansas City, Mo.


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4) Los Angeles Police Kill Man in Confrontation Caught on Video
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL

A man suspected of robbery was shot and killed by the police in Los Angeles on Sunday during a confrontation that was captured on video in a downtown homeless encampment.

The four-minute video of the fatal encounter and its aftermath was taken by a bystander and uploaded to Facebook. The video starts with the man swinging his arms at four police officers who have him surrounded on a sidewalk lined with tents.

An officer drops his nightstick and rains punches on the man, knocking him to the ground. The officer then straddles the man, who continues to struggle as two more officers arrive.

In the video, a woman standing nearby picks up the nightstick and appears to aim it at the officers. Two officers wrestle her to the ground and place her in handcuffs.

While the remaining officers struggle with the suspect, the buzzing sound of a Taser can be heard and the officer straddling the man is heard saying, “Drop the gun.”

The officer repeats the command three times before a shot is fired, followed by four more rounds. Two officers can be seen with their weapons drawn as the man lies motionless on the sidewalk.

The man was pronounced dead at a hospital, Sgt. Barry Montgomery of the Los Angeles Police Department said at a news conference. The man was not identified by the police on Sunday.

On Sunday evening, the police said they were investigating what had prompted the shooting. A witness told The Los Angeles Times that the man had reached for an officer’s weapon.

The Los Angeles Police Department said it had received a call about a robbery inside a tent in the Skid Row section of downtown. When the officers arrived, they found the suspect, who was uncooperative and tried to fight them, Sergeant Montgomery said.

The police said they were aware of the video on Sunday, but did not say how many officers had been involved in the shooting or how many had fired their service weapons. Sergeant Montgomery said the officers had used a Taser before the man was shot. No police officers were injured during the fight, he said.

“It’s going to be a long investigation, and we will get to the bottom of it,” Sergeant Montgomery said.

In the video, immediately after the shooting, bystanders can be heard yellng profanity at the officers and asking why the police had resorted to lethal force.

The man was killed in a part of downtown Los Angeles known for violence and a large number of homeless people, who are allowed to pitch tents in the area between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Witnesses who knew the man told a local television station that he was homeless and mentally unstable.

“He had a lot of mental issues,” Tonya Edwards said in an interview with KTLA.

Of the area, she said, “It’s like a melting pot for everybody that needs help.”


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5) Ferguson Police Routinely Violate Rights of Blacks, Justice Dept. Finds
By

WASHINGTON — Ferguson, Mo., is a third white, but the crime statistics compiled in the city over the past two years seemed to suggest that only black people were breaking the law. They accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.

The racial disparity in those statistics was so stark that the Justice Department has concluded in a report scheduled for release on Wednesday that there was only one explanation: The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.The report, based on a six-month investigation, provides a glimpse into the roots of the racial tensions that boiled over in Ferguson last summer after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer, making it a worldwide flash point in the debate over race and policing in America. It describes a city where the police used force almost exclusively on blacks and regularly stopped people without probable cause. Racial bias is so ingrained, the report said, that Ferguson officials circulated racist jokes on their government email accounts.

In a November 2008 email, a city official said Barack Obama would not be president long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years?” Another email included a cartoon depicting African-Americans as monkeys. A third described black women having abortions as a way to curb crime.

“There are serious problems here that cannot be explained away,” said a law enforcement official who has seen the report and spoke on the condition of anonymity because it had not been released yet.

Those findings reinforce what the city’s black residents have been saying publicly since the shooting in August, that the criminal justice system in Ferguson works differently for blacks and whites. A black motorist who is pulled over is twice as likely to be searched as a white motorist, even though searches of white drivers are more likely to turn up drugs or other contraband, the report found.

Minor, largely discretionary offenses such as disturbing the peace and jaywalking were brought almost exclusively against blacks. When whites were charged with these crimes, they were 68 percent more likely to have their cases dismissed, the Justice Department found.

“I’ve known it all my life about living out here,” Angel Goree, 39, who lives in the apartment complex where Mr. Brown was killed, said Tuesday by phone.

Many such statistics surfaced in the aftermath of Mr. Brown’s shooting, but the Justice Department report offers a more complete look at the data than ever before. Federal investigators conducted hundreds of interviews, reviewed 35,000 pages of police records and analyzed race data compiled for every police stop.

The report will most likely force Ferguson officials to either negotiate a settlement with the Justice Department or face being sued by it on charges of violating the Constitution. Under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the Justice Department has opened more than 20 such investigations into local police departments and issued tough findings against cities including Newark; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Cleveland.

But the Ferguson case has the highest profile of Mr. Holder’s tenure and is among the most closely watched since the Justice Department began such investigations in 1994, spurred by the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the riots that followed.

While much of the attention in Ferguson has been on Mr. Brown’s death, federal officials quickly concluded that the shooting was simply the spark that ignited years of pent-up tension and animosity in the area. The Justice Department is expected to issue a separate report Wednesday clearing the police officer, Darren Wilson, of civil rights violations in the shooting.

It is not clear what changes Ferguson could make that would head off a lawsuit.

The report calls for city officials to acknowledge that the police department’s tactics have caused widespread mistrust and violated civil rights. Ferguson officials have so far been reluctant to do so, particularly as relations between the city and Washington have grown strained.

Mr. Holder was openly critical of the way local officials handled the protests and the investigation into Mr. Brown’s death, and declared a need for “wholesale change” in the police department. Ferguson officials criticized Mr. Holder for a rush to judgment and saw federal officials as outsiders who did not understand their city.

Brian P. Fletcher, a former Ferguson mayor who is running for City Council in next month’s election, said he believed the report was unfair because the Justice Department relied on incomplete data. For example, he said, the racial disparity could be explained not by bias but by the large number of black people from surrounding towns who visit Ferguson to shop.

“I know to some degree we’re already on the right track because we’ve already modified our courts to make it fairer,” he said.

For Mr. Holder, the case has been deeply personal. He spoke about conversations he had as a boy with his father about what to do when stopped by the police. And he described his own experience as the victim of racial profiling. Such comments drew the ire of police groups who said Mr. Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, was fueling anti-police sentiment in minority neighborhoods. Mr. Holder has stood by his remarks, which have since been echoed by James Comey, the F.B.I. director.

The report is due to be released in Mr. Holder’s final days in office. He announced his retirement last year and plans to leave as soon as the nominee to succeed him, Loretta E. Lynch, is confirmed in the Senate.

In pushing for police reforms, the Justice Department typically does not call for personnel changes, such as the firing of a police chief. Instead, it typically seek institutional changes, such as mandated training, efforts to diversify the police force and more outside oversight. In many cities, the two sides agree on a federal monitor to ensure the police department is complying.

Ms. Goree said she was skeptical that changes would be made without the city’s being sued.

“If the Justice Department doesn’t take it to the full extent of the law,” she said, “it’s not going to be one iota of a change.”

John Eligon contributed reporting from Kansas City, Mo.

 


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6) Columbia Graduate Students Push for a Labor Union
By

“I’m Anna. I’m in the history department. I want a union because I want to be able to do this work I love and have a safety net.”

“I’m Bradley. I’m from Slavic languages. I support a union because dependent health care is outrageously expensive.”

On a frigid February afternoon, 60 Columbia University graduate students from anthropology to zoology crowded into a meeting room to brainstorm how to persuade Columbia to recognize and bargain with the labor union they are struggling to form.

They began the meeting by asking the students to introduce themselves and explain why they wanted a union. At times it sounded like group therapy to air complaints — about callous faculty advisers, inadequate maternity leave and other issues — but it was far more strategy session and pep rally.

One of the last students to chime in said: “I’m Nick. I’m also in history. We need a union because power concedes nothing without a fight.”

The group said it had gotten 1,700 of Columbia’s 2,800 graduate teaching and research assistants to sign forms saying they want to unionize. More than 100 marched recently to the office of Columbia’s president to present those forms and demand that the university recognize them as a labor union. But Columbia has refused, saying that treating students as employees could hurt their education.

Columbia points to a 2004 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that concluded that graduate teaching and research assistants were essentially students, not workers, so universities were not legally required to bargain with them even when a majority wanted a union.

Confronting that obstacle, Columbia’s graduate students are pressing the school to do what New York University did in late 2013 — agree to voluntarily recognize and bargain with its graduate students’ union.

In recent months, graduate students at Brown, Cornell, the New School and Yale have also started unionization drives, but they all face the same obstacle, the 2004 ruling. That ruling, involving graduate students at Brown, affected only private universities.

The Columbia students have asked the labor board’s New York office to oversee a unionization election, but it has refused, citing the 2004 ruling. The students hope to persuade the agency’s five-person board in Washington to reverse the 2004 ruling, which was decided by an employer-friendly, Republican-dominated board. Today’s board has a Democratic majority and is friendlier to labor.

“Given the success at N.Y.U. and some positive signals from the N.L.R.B., students at numerous schools are eager right now to pursue unionization,” said Ruth Milkman, a labor expert at the City University of New York. “There’s good reason to think the N.L.R.B. will rule their way.”

Columbia officials say the school is generous to teaching and research assistants, paying full tuition and stipends from $22,000 to $40,000, varying by department. Like many universities, Columbia fears that a union could bring tensions and strikes.

“We fully understand that pursuing a Ph.D. is a highly challenging path, both intellectually and personally,” Columbia said in a statement. “Our graduate students are scholars in training whose teaching and research are an integral part of their doctoral studies. As the N.L.R.B. found in the Brown University case, we believe that treating students as employees could adversely affect their educational experience.”

Seth Prins, a Ph.D. candidate in epidemiology, asserted that it was wrong for Columbia and the labor board to consider the teaching and research assistants merely students. “If we stopped providing our teaching and research services to the university, it would cease to be the world-class institution it is,” he said. “Being a student is not incompatible with being a worker.”

The Columbia students are seeking to join the United Automobile Workers, which represents thousands of white-collar workers, including Columbia’s clerical workers, as well as N.Y.U. and University of Connecticut graduate students.

Alex Beecher, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in chemistry, has reservations about unionizing.

“I’m happy with the current situation,” he said. “We get a fair package from Columbia.”

“As grad students, we certainly have a worker role,” Mr. Beecher added. “But we’re also students, and by changing the nature of our worker role, a union would change the nature of our experience as students.”

At Yale, union organizers have collected more than 1,000 pro-union signatures from graduate students and asked the university to grant recognition. More than 1,000 graduate students and their allies staged a protest on campus in October, with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut there to voice support.

“This has really been energized by the example of N.Y.U.,” said Aaron Greenberg, a graduate student in political science and president of Yale’s Graduate Employees and Students Organization. “We want to sit down and negotiate about our benefits, our pay and our work at the university.”

A university spokesman, Thomas Conroy, said: “Yale believes that graduate students are students, not employees. Further, we do not believe it is in the best interests of the students, the faculty or the educational process to change the teacher-student relationship to a manager-employee relationship.”

Mr. Conroy called Yale’s financial package for graduate students “among the most generous in the country,” valuing it at $65,000 a year. The students are guaranteed five or six years of full tuition plus stipend and heavily subsidized health coverage.

Luis Lei, a graduate student in philosophy at the New School, spoke in envy of Columbia’s and Yale’s financial packages. At the New School, graduate students generally pay most of their tuition and receive modest stipends for teaching or research.

A majority of the New School’s graduate students have signed forms supporting membership in the autoworkers’ union.

“The basic concerns are wages, a lack of job security and not having any say about labor conditions,” Mr. Lei said.

The New School has not responded to the students’ request for union recognition, saying it is evaluating its options.

“We are assessing the impact recognition would have on the education of all of our students,” a New School spokeswoman, Josephine Parr, said. “Our current resources are more modest than those of larger research universities.”

At Columbia, Olga Brudastova, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, voiced a common complaint: She said her stipend checks sometimes arrived three months late. When that happens, graduate students worry that if they push too hard to get their delayed checks, they might infuriate their faculty adviser or the administration.

“Having a union could go a long way to help,” Ms. Brudastova said.


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7) Oklahoma: House Approves Executions by Gas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oklahoma would become the first state to allow the execution of inmates using nitrogen gas under a bill approved 85 to 10 on Tuesday by the State House. The bill was put forth by Representative Mike Christian, an Oklahoma City Republican who began studying alternative methods after a botched lethal injection in the spring led the United States Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s current three-drug method. Mr. Christian said numerous studies had been conducted on nitrogen hypoxia, which is similar to what pilots at high altitudes can encounter when oxygen supplies diminish. He described the method as humane, painless and easy to administer. Under the bill, which goes to the Senate, lethal injection would remain the first method of execution, but nitrogen gas would become the second alternative if injection was declared unconstitutional or if the drugs became unavailable. Mr. Christian said that there would be no need to construct a gas chamber and that the nitrogen could be administered inside a tent or through a secure mask worn by the inmate.


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